Gardner Rea (1894 - December 29, 1966) was an American cartoonist, and one of the original contributing artists to The New Yorker.[1] Of Rea, one commentator has written: “He was bawdy without being obscene, absurd without being obscure. His captioned and uncaptioned gags were pithy and true.”[2]
A native of Ironton, Ohio, Rea was born into an artistic family and planned to become a painter. When he was fifteen years old, he sold a gag cartoon to Life magazine.[1]
He attended East High School in Columbus, Ohio and Ohio State University, where he met and befriended James Thurber.[1] Rea played tennis in college and was the editor of the humor magazine, the Sundial,[1] which he had helped to found.[3]
From 1914, he worked as a freelance writer and artist in Manhattan, and contributed to Life and Judge magazines.[1] During World War I, he served in the Chemical Warfare Service.[1]
He began contributing not only drawings and covers but also gags to The New Yorker after it was founded in 1925.[1] Artists such as Charles Addams and Helen Hokinson drew cartoons based on gags written by Rea.[1]
Gardner Rea in the mid 1930s was a regular contributor to the Communist Party's literary magazine "New Masses," with work appearing in nearly every weekly issues in the years 1936 and 1937.[4]